


The Choices She Makes

by CaptainDeryn



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depictions of injury, F/M, Serious Injuries, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-10
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-17 07:07:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29962731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainDeryn/pseuds/CaptainDeryn
Summary: With the destruction of the Reapers, Shepard’s fate was in limbo until she is recovered by the Normandy. She is faced with a choice and a question: to stay, or to finally rest. When does the body win over willpower?Garrus grapples with the thought of losing her and all that she’s been through.
Relationships: Female Shepard/Garrus Vakarian
Comments: 2
Kudos: 12





	The Choices She Makes

**Author's Note:**

> TW: Possible troubling descriptions of injury, implied temporary character death

If one more person told him to give up hope, Garrus wasn’t certain he could hold his tongue or his hands any longer. Already his hands clenched into fists whenever someone mentioned Shephard. His tendons ached from the strain, sending smarting pain up his arms. 

Twenty-four hours and counting since Shepard had ended the war. Erring further from a full day than near it. 

Harbinger's voice still rattled his bones. The blinding light of the Reaper’s weapons, sweeping across the battlefield still flashed behind his eyes. Around his waist and gripping his wrist, he felt the ghost of Shephard’s arms hauling him to safety. Her voice, deadly calm, echoing in his ears, even amongst the chaos of war. 

Her eyes, steely and flashing with the bursts of firing shots, holding his. 

_No matter what happens here...I love you, I always will_. 

And all he could muster in return was a measly _I love you too_ , too taken hazed with pain and shaken by the finality in her voice to come up with something better. Twenty-four hours and counting into forever and all she had heard from him in the end was a simple, basic declaration. 

He swore he heard her scream when Harbinger's attack blinded out the windows of the Normandy. It was ridiculous, they were closed off, in the air, while Shepard was still on the ground. A scream couldn’t carry that far--

“Tali!” Breaking out of the swirling vortex of memories, Garrus snapped, “Turn it off.” 

When the sound didn’t immediately stop, his voice dropped pitifully, “ _Please_.” 

Garrus did not beg. Tali turned it off immediately. 

“Sorry, Garrus.” she said softly, walking over to him. “We’re trying to scan it to find out if...well…” 

What answers they hoped to gain from Shepard’s painful, rasping breaths that made his own chest ache, and the anguished determination failing in her voice until all that remained was desperation, he didn’t know. Whatever intelligence they could gain from the audio would not be found layered in Shephard’s screams and screams of pain. 

“If the search is still worth it.” Garrus finished with a hint of bitterness. “I thought the Alliance didn’t stop searching until all their people were found--dead of alive.” 

A ridiculous thought now. That was the sort of mentality research for Earth’s wars. The dead numbered too high now for everyone to return home. He clenched his jaw. 

“It was quick of them to give you that.” Tali broke the silence again, nodding to the simple plate of metal he twisted in his hands. It’s shining surface reflected back from her helmet. 

A memorial plate, meant to be placed on the Normandy’s wall. A simple silver thing, _Commander Ryn Shepard_ carved onto it. Garrus made a deeply unhappy noise. 

The stubbornness in his voice was perhaps immature for a war verteran; he wasn’t sure he cared anymore, “It’s not going up.” he said. “Not until we know for certain.” 

“I know Garrus.” The careful, walking-on-eggshells quiet Tali spoke with drove him insane. It was all _I know Garrus, we’ve all lost Shepard Garrus. Don’t be unreasonable, Garrus, grieve on your own_. 

It wasn’t, he was projecting, yet he still stood up far too suddenly, his farewell a bit too sharp. 

He made it halfway to Shephard’s quarters blindly, seeing and feeling that final fight instead of the ship around him, when a crew member collided with him. The wall connected sharply with Garrus’ wounded shoulder, ripping a vehement curse from him. 

The crew member was harried, eyes wide, “I’m sorry! But--wait--Garrus!” she gasped, “Garrus they’ve found her.” 

All the breath rushed out of Garrus at once, leaving him to rasp a single syllable, “ _What_?” 

“They’ve found a heat signal!” the words were tossed back at him from a mouth already halfway down the hall, running at full tilt. Garrus ran after them, worn and torn muscles shouting at him while his heart yelled _go faster_! 

The floor rocke below him as the Normandy landed, the familiar sounds of the doors opening rocking through the shop.

“Garrus!” His singular focus shattered when he slammed into Kaiden, the human’s hands bracing against the Turian’s shoulders. “Hold on a minute.” 

“Hold on--” Garrus shoved against Kaiden’s grip, irritation coursing up through him like fire in his blood. “What do you mean hold on-- _Shepard_.” 

Kaiden, with force that shouldn’t have worked, practically frog-marched Garrus backwards, “We don’t know what’s down there. If the heat signature was...well if it was false hope.” 

The soldier fixed Garrus with a look with far more empathy than he expected. “Trust me, just wait here, some things you don’t want to see.” 

In natural fashion, Garrus did not listen. He pushed past Kaiden with a stubborn scowl, heart beating too hard and roaring too loud in his ears for any of his mind’s logic to be heard. 

She was covered by the crinkling fabric of an emergency blanket, clearly pulled from a field medic pack. If it could still be considered her. 

Those who had ventured out were shouting, hurrying; all background chaos to Garrus. His world had narrowed just to the arm hanging out from beneath the shining, tinfoil like fabric. Everything else was blurred, quieted, nonexistent. 

He’d held that hand in his, run his fingers over that skin in comfort as he pulled her close. 

The hand now that was hanging limp, bruised and bloodied with broken nails. His eyes stared wide, stuck as though he couldn’t tear them away or even blink, at the tattered fabric of her armor that was melded to grisly, intensely colored burns. 

He couldn’t see her face, they had covered it. Whether that scared him more, he wasn’t sure. 

“Shepard—“ he croaked out. No one noticed. He stumbled forward a step before rocking backwards, uncertainty catching him like a dog hitting the end of a leash. 

“Shepard!” He was noticed then, perhaps the break in his voice carried further. She was already out of sight, being rushed to the medical bay with an urgency that gave him at least the smallest spark of hope. They didn’t rush corpses to a hospital bay—not even corpses as valuable as Commander Shepard. 

News of her condition was quick to spread across Normandy. In all the urgency, no one told Garrus themselves. He heard it in snippets of conversation, numbly walk-in to the medbay just to stand by the windows and try to come to terms with what he was seeing. \

She was barely hanging on, they may have found her too late. Shepard was strong, but how much can personal strength really carry someone? At what point does biology and the body finally win out over willpower? 

When they uncovered her, just before Doctor Chakwas lowered the tint of the windows for privacy, it churned Garrus’ stomach through the numbness. The expression the doctor wore, usually unbothered after years of hardening from her time in the service, chilled him to the bone. 

No, there was no doubt now that medical care was just a formality at this point. It was up to Shepard now to decide if she had the strength remaining to come back. 

—-

“I wouldn’t blame you for being tired, Shepard.” Garrus murmured to her when they finally let him in. After long hours of endless procedures and transfusions and work, she was stabilized by the machines beeping in steady tandem at her bedside. Underneath bandages her skin was bruised and raw. All of the scars that Cerberus had left to bring her back to life had returned with the extensive repairs. 

She would hate that, he thought to himself, hand brushing some of them as he went to move a stray piece of hair from her face. The burned strands fell apart at the touch and he winced, pulling his hand back. Those scars were a consistent crisis for her, a point of contention with herself as to whether she was still herself or some fabricated reimagining of Ryn Shepard. 

They would fade, just as they had before. All her bruises and scars would fade, as much as they could. Her singed hair would grow back and her body would strengthen again as long as she gave it the chance. 

Garrus sat back, bowing his head. His other hand rested on the bed still, tracing the texture of the blanket. 

“After everything you deserve to be damn well exhausted. If you just wanted to—wanted to rest now then no one would fault you. I would understand.” 

He may as well have been talking to himself. He hated it. 

“But Ryn...this is too much to ask but,” His breath hitched. “Far too much, but please consider staying. Rest as long as you need but please wake up.” 

The world was a mess, yes, but it was one she had saved. Didn’t she deserve to see it? Did she even want to see it, or did he just not want her to see it so that she would be by his side again? 

Garrus rubbed a hand over his face, ignoring the way his body ached from hunching by her bedside for hours on end. He didn’t know the answers. But he knew after all they’d been through, nothing scared him more than losing her for real. 

The memories of losing her the first time were still too fresh, the spiral he had gone through that had led him to Archangel. Going through that again, without the miracle at the end of the tunnel, was an excruciating thought. 

Her making the choice to come back, though, was a certain kind of excruciating he had not even considered. 

—-

“Why me?” Shepard’s voice shook. 

Garrus took too long taking in that she was awake. The machines beside her picked up their pace. She did not look at them, did not panic as Garrus had seen other waking patients do.

All she did was stare at him, though her eyes verged on distance that made him think she truly wasn’t staring at _him_. Pain, deep, cutting, pain far worse than anything physical, coated her voice: 

“Why am I back again? Why did I get the choice to live again?” 

_Again_ was a strong word. Cerberus had not given her a choice to live or die. 

“You weren’t ready to let go yet.” Garrus said simply, keeping a careful eye on her. The machines had not picked up to an alarming rate, but it wasn’t her vitals he was concerned about. “I selfishly asked you to stay.” 

“The Geth.” Shepard gasped and she gave a low, miserable whine. “I killed them, they trusted me and for that trust I _killed them_ . Garrus, I made a choice. I made a choice—“ her eyes welled, tears beginning to streak down her face. Her chest jumped in a bone jarring sob. “I don’t want to choose anymore. I _can’t_.” 

His heart broke in his chest and with great gentleness he cradled her hands on his. She sobbed harder, staring hard at the opposite wall as she felt the anguish the Reapers’ war caused wash over her. 

Trying to soothe her right now was a lost cause. The last time he had tried to give her platitudes and reassurances of her choices, she had politely told him to stop talking and _support_. Shepard was familiar with the consequences of any choice, she did not make them without deep consideration. Whatever choice she had made on the Crucifix, it had to have been the only path she saw. 

She knew this, somewhere, Garrus saw it in her wordless grieving. She grieved the losses, the consequences of her choice, and that she had needed to make that choice at all. 

So he supported her, cradled her hands and pressed feather light kisses to her healing skin. Giving her a lifeline, a rock. 

Her breathing slowed with the cadence of the machines soon following. Taking a soft cloth from her bedside, Garrus carefully blotted her face and neck dry, keenly aware of how she simply watched him from exhausted eyes. 

Those eyes closed, her cheek pressing against his hand. 

“Garrus.” She whispered. “Keep me here.” 

Her hand found his again, clutching it tight, “It’s too much to handle right now but...please. Keep me here.” 

Against his better judgement, Garrus gathered her into his arms. Though she made a soft noise of discomfort, she curled into him, pressing her face into his shoulder. With a feather-light touch, he ran his hand down her back. 

It took him several moments to compose himself and even then he was still fragile. 

“I’ll help you stay.” He promised. 


End file.
